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Saturday, 19 December 2015

I have many things to blog about and ideas in my queue - a few half-written drafts and one almost finished final copy. But none of that is important right now.

I'm incredibly late in finding this out, perhaps a side-effect of spending the last two months of my life packing to move to a much better, happier place than where I live now. It was reason enough to drop off of some of the places I frequent, I thought, because it's not like the same people won't be there when I have finished my move.

But I've just learned that Telsa Gwynne has died. Possibly not a whole lot of people who read my blog will know her, but she was quite active in the open-source community when I was growing up. I loved to read her "diary entries", what today we would call a blog. It was during a re-read of her diary last year that I became inspired to create this blog, and indeed, my musing posts are basically my own version of it. It is directly as a result of her writing that this blog exists, and that I have been able to help others whether it be in FreeBSD, Gentoo, Python, or elsewhere. I am grateful to her and I am quite sorry that I never was able to tell her about it. I had considered it, at one time, but felt it would be silly, especially since I am not very well known yet outside of some FreeBSD circles. Who am I to bother someone whom I greatly respect, with a silly story of a small blog? Regret does not begin to express the emotions I feel from not telling her anyway.

Fare thee well, Telsa. I did not know you personally, but your writing style would betray that in my heart and mind, and those of many like me. You may have been removed from the open source communities you were once a large part of, but your legacy lives on, and will always live on. Your perseverance inspired me. And I give all of my deepest condolences to your family and friends, who will surely miss you more than I ever could.